until you fade into me
by Aurora-Borealis Coyote
Summary: Greed has just been sealed and Envy has never been more deserving of envy, deserving of Dante and their overturned world.


Envy does not dream, no, he sees inside the surroundings, he sees underneath, the looks of it behind the presentations of the people and nature around him. Only a shapeshifter know what something truly looks like, only he can understand the feel of the lives and unlives and unlives (and un-life there is!) around him, it's so disgusting and visceral and strong in its hideous weakness and reality (he knows what the world is really like, no human can except possibly dear Master Dante, and he's no human) that it's the only sort of thing he'd waste his time referring to as _beautiful_ .

Such a word is squandered and pitifully misused it makes him want to see that beauty burn.

But there are, even to him, more satisfying fates to cause than ashes and smoke.

(He almost hadn't believed it when Dante had informed him but after that slight moment he had almost _loved _her for it, no that's the wrong word, he's better than love, he's _better _than _the other one_ who _loved_ rebellion and _freedom_ and _pleasure _and _humanity, _so much better, oh how he'd laughed until one of the pillars in the mansion's foyer had _fallen_ and grandly splintered (like that carbon shield could, like memories that vanish once no one is left after hundreds of years to remember them) until Master Dante had put her hands down and rebuilt the whole thing back shining and thick and gold.

She has a way of making things replaced.

But not him, he'll _always_ be at her side, and Greed was a fool to believe he had a place between them, and now Greed has one place, the one he was always meant to have and never anything beyond that because he can have it he can have everything he has had everything that she had to offer and he took it and ruined it and how can they keep him by their side without sealing him? They cannot trust his actions, cannot trust the morality of a truth-teller who values words more than the right order and disorders and disorders and disorders that must be imposed to keep it going (there is no value to hard work, she says, it doesn't give you what you want so you need to destroy what you don't want, and do that, he does, he does) and the only way to destroy a shield is to give it nothing to protect even itself- and thus that is Greed's demise, permanent and still. Forever. Or not forever. But time is what they have, all the time in the world as long as it can be made and Dante, oh, the things she can _make,_ no wonder the human who Greed was wanted her too, wanted to stay by her and his spirit stayed where it should have left for the space that the true being was given, and now he must stay in the laboratory- fitting. A place for experiments that forsake the gods that can never exist in a world of humans and monsters, and _humans_ who become the so-called monsters they preach against. Envy knows how hideous these creatures are, and Greed is no better.

He defied her, he was foolish enough to leave the woman who gave them everything and could give them anything that someone like them could ever want.

Oh if he wants to be human then he deserves to be one, he deserves to die like one- no, not that merciful. He's going to fade into memory like William will, like the Dante who lived before the Dante with the jewel-haired old woman's body and all the other bodies before that (he doesn't keep track, really,he doesn't care what she looks like and she doesn't care what he looks like, but within limits, _even they have limits) _– and Envy knows then, he knows as he pulls back into the human's form and gets onto the horse-and-carriage to take Dante back from this place, he knows Greed is the one who should be envying him, Greed is the one who should have to spend every moment of his eternity there that he is just caught between humanity and death and he will never be as flawlessly undefined as Envy is, he will never be above time, he will never be the shadow of memories that are doomed to be forgotten and rendered meaningless, he will never be what Envy is to Dante, _he will never be Dante's- _

__It's better than a dream, it's better than rest, Envy doesn't need to be calmed, he needs rawness and exhilaration and the satisfaction of bringing what he _can. _He never dreams. He can do better.

The cobblestones on the road do not crack under the weight of Envy and Dante, but the world does, the world is cracking and shifting and being remade tailored to them, and it was always meant to be that, all because of Dante, not William, not _that man, _and Greed, certainly not him. It was always just Dante and Envy. Just the two of them, the world isn't big enough for them and the humans, even if she's a human, she's bigger than all of them combined and only he can be his match as they bathe it in red light and watch it burn down, burn down to ash and flat waste, so they can rebuild on top of it, rebuild in their own way that no one else deserves to understand. _Just you and me._

_Until it's just us, and then after that. And then only what we leave of the world can remember will know. Always me._


End file.
